Archive for the ‘Email’ Category

Everyone has their quirks, especially here at Stanford, where high achievement is often the result of hyperorganization and highly developed time management and planning skills. Where Stewart MacGregor-Dennis differs from most students is that he posts his thinking online for all of Stanford to see. This can make him a target, but it also means that you know the candidate you are voting for. Spending his personal money on maintaining his social media (if you look through his ODesk account, he has only spent about $50 services related to his campaign) doesn’t seem to be an issue pertinent to his ability to be President. And in the end, it’s all transparent: everyone can see his likes, twitter followers, and ODesk account. Why is the most controversial issue in this campaign the idea that a candidate might actually try to maximize his social media footprint? Some tactics may have been misguided, but to claim Stewart is unethical or that he was trying to dupe the student body is laughable. We all know how the internet works: things that get liked or followed get more likes or followers. But everyone can still see who is liking and following what.

The current attacks on Stewart aren’t focused on his experience, or his platform. They don’t critique the things he has done working for the ASSU, and they don’t question his plans for the coming year. Instead, they focus primarily on his personal life. This isn’t problematic in and of itself—politicians open themselves up to scrutiny by the public. Stewart, perhaps more than any other student at Stanford, lives his life with transparency.

Much has been made of the infamous 40 page life plan, his propensity for mind mapping, and his activetweeting. These are all ways in which Stewart has combined the private and public spheres of his life. This is quirky, and it’s easy to look at a 40 page life plan and crack jokes (you have, after all, forty pages of material to work with). However, the things that look eccentric in Stewart’s personal life are the things that make his successful in Stanford student government. Life plans, mind maps—all of these are indicative of a strong vision and a passion for organization.

After today, five minutes of all training sessions for Stanford administrative staff will be devoted to instructing people on the proper way to communicate information to students. That is, NEVER ADD THEM TO ONE GIANT MAILING LIST THAT THEY CAN SEND EMAILS TO. They will figure this out, they’re Stanford students.

At 5:20PM, all 6000+ students of Stanford’s undergraduate population found themselves added to the ugres_rcfs mailing list (which is officially the distribution list for Student Housing Undergraduate Room Condition Forms). The first email from the list was a repeat of a police report that had been issued last night, probably from the list’s administrator. Within minutes, people started asking the entire membership of the mailing list questions about the list, sparking several message threads of increasing confusion, rage, and diabolical glee.

I was sitting at Stern Dining last night in an attempt to keep myself awake to study. That location is a pretty mixed bag when it comes to people working quietly, laughing with their friends, or just grabbing a bite to eat from The Dish. Last night was one of the particularly noisier times and one subject repeatedly surfaced amongst different groups. I first noticed a rather obnoxious animated group of freshmen boys behind me gather around a laptop, laughing about some “hilarious” email that got leaked at USC. A few minutes later, the girls at a table to my left started talking about a link shared on Facebook about USC’s chapter of Kappa Sigma being under investigation. It came full circle when the friend I was sitting with read aloud from one of the most vile and offensive emails I’ve had the displeasure of seeing.

The intent of the email, reportedly sent by an unidentified member of the fraternity, was to start a “Gullet Report” about which girls are most willing to have sex and which brothers are getting the most action. One of the earliest lines in the email reads:

Note: I will refer to females as “targets”. They aren’t actual people like us men. Consequently, giving them a certain name or distinction is pointless.”

And it just gets worse and worse from there. The author runs down a list of key terms, describing different types of “pie” (vaginas) and the various methods to be utilized to “take down” certain targets. One such example is the Loop n’ Doop: (more…)

So, if you haven’t heard, Spokeo.com is a new website that aggregates your online data. At this point, I’ve personally been sent messages on Facebook and through multiple chat lists. But back to the main topic – in layman’s terms, Spokeo is an online phonebook that tells anyone who looks up your name where you live, your phone number, etc. Yet that comes with abig if. Many web users, when they hear of the site, have a moment of panic. Anyone in the world can find out where I live? They have a picture of my house from Google Maps? This is horrifying!

John Doe might be the generic character that no one can identify, but Spokeo can find him. And the 15,918 who also share his name online.

Except, it isn’t. The first time I looked myself up on Spokeo, I could barely find anything. Yes – my name and email address exist on the web, but I didn’t dig up anything damaging or security-threatening. Although people are worried about their privacy, Spokeo is an aggregatormeaning it only collects what’s already out there. That means if Spokeo is somehow able to post your address, and phone number, that means you’ve stored private information somewhere public. Meaning, that it’s not thanks to Spokeo that everyone can find out information about your life – it’s thanks to you.

So the first step in dealing with Spokeo is really simple: take your page off of the web. While Spokeo is a little bit creepier, because it gathers all the information together, it’s really not that much different from Googling yourself (which I advise all of you to do). After you get rid of your Spokeo page, the next step is to actually make sure that information you would prefer to be private is actually inaccessible! I admit to putting too much of myself out there in the heydays of Myspace and when I first got a Facebook but it’s different now.

In recent times, people are worrying more and more about internet privacy. With aggregator sites likeSpokeo, Pipl, Intelius, and more (no, Spokeo was not even close to being the first site) the first step in protecting your identity online falls in your own hands. So please stop freaking out about Spokeo. I can’t say anything about the information that can be bought (although some of the websites listed above claim that its for the most part inaccurate), but the way people conduct themselves online is the main issue here. We’re not victims. If you want to protect your privacy, do it.

So you had a drink or several on Saturday night. They not only made you a remarkably better dancer, but also gave you a whole slew of ingenious ideas. Your girlfriend dumped you last week? Now is a fantastic time to send her an email. Have a crappy boss? Update your Facebook status to let the world know about it.

Hindsight’s twenty-twenty, and the next day these great ideas may come back to bite you in the ass. Thinking along this line, Webroot, a web security company, just came out with “The Social Media Sobriety Test”. According to them, “Nothing good happens online after 1AM”.

The plug-in would require you to pass a series of sobriety tests before gaining access to certain sites. The tests mimic those administered by the police: spelling the alphabet backwards and following a finger as it moves around on the screen. The plug-in can be customized to run for social media sites and email during your likeliest times of intoxication. If you’d rather not end up on Failbook, you can set it up for Facebook login. If you fail the test, the site will make a post for you (e.g. “John Doe is too intoxicated to post right now”). It doesn’t work on phones, so you’re on your own when it comes to drunk dialing/texting. (more…)

On the email circuits right now: a petition against ABM (Janitorial Services Company) for allegedly firing Terman Engineering center janitor Karina Reyes for charging her cell phone on a University computer.The petition description reads:Karina worked at Stanford through ABM, a janitorial subcontractor. While cleaning offices, Karina connected her cell phone to a Stanford computer to charge. ABM suspended and then fired her for touching the computer, claiming that Stanford had requested this. However, Stanford says that it never asked for her dismissal. Moreover, the owner of the computer asked that Karina not be fired. Karina is taking her case to a federal mediator on February 10, but this is no guarantee that she will get her job back. Please sign our petition and tell ABM and Stanford that ABM’s actions were disproportionate and that Karina should keep her job.
Can these accusations be true? If so, the firing of Reyes (who claims to have an unblemished record) for simply charging her cell phone is horrifying. Unfortunately, SLAC’s previous fights for any sort of fair labor have been met with heavy resistance, and so we can only speculate as to what will happen here.

Timothy Tam ’12 has found a particularly Stanford–and very effective–way of raising money for the Haitian earthquake victims: fixing people’s bikes for cheap and giving all of the proceeds to UNICEF. A member of the cycling team, Tam is offering $5 basic repairs (way cheaper than the campus bike store) plus discounted parts and giving the profits to Haiti.
Tam, who does not appear to have any relation to the cookie, writes:I’ll be charging $5 for basic repairs ie. lubing chains, tightening brakes and $10 for more time consuming jobs like fixing flats and adjusting gear shifters. If you need any specific part for your bike ie. bike lights, helmets etc., I can help you out with that too as the Menlo Velo bike store on El Camino has agreed to supply parts at a lower price for this cause. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail at timtam79@stanford.edu if you’d like me to have a look at your bike or have any other questions.
Think of it as the anti-bake sale: donate a little money to do your exercise, not to have to work it off.
And yes, that is a picture of the Monty Python character ‘Bicycle Repair Man,’ flanked by nerdy-looking superheroes.

Two emails have been making the circuits lately, and both highlight interesting aspects of the Stanford community/experience.
The first is an invitation to an event with that intends to address the 1 in 4 depression rate at Stanford by “just good old venting and problem-solving” by those feeling the effects of an inexplicable drear just below the surface of each day. Thursday, November 12 at 9:00 pm in Old Union 216C. (See below for the complete email and my brief opinion).
The second is certainly more frivolous. It’s a blog in the vein of FML where the catch phrase has been altered to: SMIF (Saving Money Is Fun!). The blog is the project of the ASES frosh intern team (whatever that is) and was designed to compete in the Global Innovation Tournament, which asks its entrants to find innovative ways to making saving money fun. SMIF Blog
(Read more below the jump)